Liars and Saints

 Great writing sometimes seems prophetic; "Caroline, or Change" described New Orleans's "sea level issues." These descriptions arrived on Broadway *before* Hurricane Katrina. "Caroline" also imagined the toppling of Confederate monuments--imagined this long before the George Floyd years. Tony Kushner's extraordinary creation, Caroline Thibodeaux, is damaged by war, racial injustice, and domestic abuse. She has a working heart and mind--but it's simply too costly to show her heart to the world. She says this explicitly to the audience: "Some folks go to school at night--some folks march for civil rights. And I don't....I can't hardly read...." Caroline's nervous breakdown seems to be a tip of the hat to "Gypsy." The title of the song even echoes "Rose's Turn"; Kushner uses the tag "Lot's Wife." But "Caroline" takes a step beyond "Gypsy," because it adds a musical Epi...

 Character and voice are everything; plot is a secondary consideration. An example: "1943" from "Caroline, or Change." The story is simple: A woman marries an inadequate Navy man who can't get his act together after WWII. He becomes a drunk; he tries to work for the ammonia factory, but the union excludes Black men. Later, there is domestic abuse. He abandons his family. As Caroline relives this story, we overhear her prayer: God whose eye is on the sparrow-- Please make Emmie go to bed. Folk will stare tomorrow; Jesus, please fix up my swollen head. Please: a job, so he stops drinking. Please.....he don't like digging sewers.... We see Caroline's hopelessness and her ferocity; as she begins to imagine a better situation for herself, the melody speeds up. Caroline will give orders; she will tell God what to do. Please give me a mop and bucket. Please: a white-folks'-house to tend. Please: some money. Feed the babies. Choke his throat when he drink li...

 "Caroline, or Change" is a show about hatred, power, fury, and despair. It's about two people looking at each other across a wide gulf; it captures moments of mutual incomprehension. It is one writer's series of childhood memories, but it feels timeless and universal. In an extraordinary moment, the protagonist waits for the bus, after work. Her white employer has taken many chances to shit all over her throughout the day; the power imbalance is such that the employer doesn't even realize when she is being a tool. ("Caroline, you keep my child's spare change whenever he leaves it in his dirty pants. This will teach him a lesson. Really, YOU will be helping ME!") Caroline sits in her anger, while the moon (yes, the moon) tries to make a point. Here is what the moon says: Moon change... Moon change... Glowing bright. Light up the night. Make your dress of spotless white Turn to purple, turn to gleam... Cool and dry-- Free and high-- Miles free from ba...

  I was really touched by "The Fabelmans," a big-budget movie about a family. How strange to see people talking to their children on a big screen. So many Hollywood films now seem to be about male colleagues joining forces to defeat Ultron; it's radical to get stars together in one house, and radical to write dialogue about Hanukkah presents, kosher kitchens, rubber spiders underneath the dinnerware. (Tony Kushner is, as always, on a wavelength that the rest of us can't approach.) Kushner collaborated with Steven Spielberg to write what seems to be a love letter to Spielberg's mother. Since the movie is Spielberg's work of autobiography, its subplot is all about the nature of movie-making; a story about storytelling inevitably has a "meta" quality. So--for example--when a girl says to the little boy Sammy Fabelman, "You never make movies about women," Spielberg is of course winking at us. He is saying, "I hear what you say about my wor...

  I've never seen "Caroline, or Change," but I like the deep weirdness of the story.  A gay white kid in New Orleans, mid-century, has a habit of leaving change in his pocket. His stepmother wants to punish him; she tells the maid, "You keep any change you find in that pocket of Noah's." This is, of course, uncomfortable for the maid, Caroline; basically, her employer is asking her to steal from a small child. But how do you say no to your employer? Tony Kushner can do anything he wants, and he counts Maurice Sendak among his friends, so, in "Caroline," we encounter a singing bus, a singing moon, a talking Confederate statue. The story feels a bit like "Gypsy"; Caroline is caught in entrenched behaviors, but her daughter, rebellious Emmie, sees a way forward. Emmie is the "Change" that Kushner alludes to in the title of his work (among other types of "change"). "Caroline," and its upcoming revival, are a spec...

 In its final hours, "It's a Sin" continues to feel like a revelation. It's like someone carried these stories for years--and he has finally allowed himself to sit in front of a computer and write. One character--Colin--is like Beth in "Little Women." At least for a while. We think he is going to have a decorous valedictory scene--he is such a saint!--but then the writer shocks us. Colin's condition means that he can't think clearly, and he begins ranting about his erotic fixation on one particular hospital guest. "I used to think about you and wank off," he says. Then: He actually begins fondling himself right there in public. This is like the writer's calling card: I'm not going to make things easy for you. Elsewhere, the character Roscoe becomes a high-paid rent boy for a conservative politician. Bizarrely, the politician reveals he has a "hard-on for Margaret Thatcher." Roscoe responds reasonably: "Nonsense. You...